Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Intel Details Nehalem CPU and Larrabee GPU

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the business-is-war dept.

Vigile writes "Intel previewed the information set to be released at IDF next month including details on a wide array of technology for server, workstation, desktop and graphics chips. The upcoming Tukwila chip will replace the current Itanium lineup with about twice the performance at a cost of 2 billion transistors and Dunnington is a hexa-core processor using existing Core 2 architecture. Details of Nehalem, Intel's next desktop CPU core that includes an integrated memory controller, show a return of HyperThreading-like SMT, a new SSE 4.2 extension and modular design that features optional integrated graphics on the CPU as well. Could Intel beat AMD in its own "Fusion" plans? Finally, Larrabee, the GPU technology Intel is building, was verified to support OpenGL and DirectX upon release and Intel provided information on a new extension called Advanced Vector Extension (AVX) for SSE that would improve graphics performance on the many-core architecture."

166 comments

  1. Nehalem? Larrabee? by thomasdz · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Heck, I remember when "Pentium" came out and people laughed

    --
    Karma: Excellent. 15 moderator points expire sometime.
  2. Gflargen and Blackeblae by deathtopaulw · · Score: 0

    Haven't they heard of numbers?
    You know... cpu 5?

    1. Re:Gflargen and Blackeblae by iknownuttin · · Score: 5, Informative
      Haven't they heard of numbers?

      You can't trademark numbers. When AMD started releasing "x86" numbered processors, Intel filed suit and lost. The judge stated that you can't trademark numbers. It's such an old case, this is what I found in the last 10 minutes regarding Intel and trademarking numbers.

      I'm tired and too lazy to find the actual lawsuit.

      --
      I prefer Flambe as apposed flamebait.
    2. Re:Gflargen and Blackeblae by 91degrees · · Score: 1

      Would be nice if there was some sort of pattern to the naming though. Pentium, Pentium II, Pentium III and Pentium 4 made it clear which one was newer (although the shift to arabic numerals was a little inconsistent). I have no idea where the other processors fit into this pattern.

    3. Re:Gflargen and Blackeblae by ChronoReverse · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Well, it went from Core, to Core 2. I'd presume these new chips would get the "Core 3" moniker.

    4. Re:Gflargen and Blackeblae by compro01 · · Score: 1

      they then went Pentium D, core/core duo, core 2 duo/core 2 quad, though i dunno what they're gonna call this bunch.

      --
      upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
    5. Re:Gflargen and Blackeblae by tzot · · Score: 5, Funny

      Pentium, Pentium II, Pentium III and Pentium 4 made it clear which one was newer (although the shift to arabic numerals was a little inconsistent).
      Someone sent an email to the Intel board of directors, allegedly from CIA, beginning with "Dear Sirs: it has come to our attention that you label your products with arabic numerals."

      It took them a while to get that it was a joke.

      --
      I speak England very best
    6. Re:Gflargen and Blackeblae by Naughty+Bob · · Score: 1

      I remember the days when a youngster could go to bed dreaming of Longhorn firing bits through a tweaked Sexium....

      --
      "Be light, stinging, insolent and melancholy"
    7. Re:Gflargen and Blackeblae by DiEx-15 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Now, please keep in mind my understanding of the law is next to "naive" but here is my understanding:

      For something to be considered "trademarkable" there has to be some form of association with the trademark. For example: Mickey Mouse & the Walt Disney Castle are trademarks of Walt Disney since you see or hear these images, you conger the images of Disney and such. Now if Intel could prove such links with numbers, perhaps there is a chance. HOWEVER the reason this has been (and always will be) a total demonstration in futility is because numbers can't generate the same iconic images as words or pictures. Numbers are numbers and signify values, not property or anything tangible. Granted there are trademarks with numbers in them but usually they have a letter or two thrown in. That is where it goes from just numbers to a word - a word with numbers in them. That is when it can be trademarked.

      What Intel is trying to do is go "If you use 10206 as a name for something, we will sue!" The problem is:
      1) I will sue Intel because that is part of a story I have and have proof I beat them to. (Although that is totally off the real topic here & I would meet with their pit bull lawyers)
      2) If you got 10206 as a math answer, how would the law differentiate between it and Intel's property?
      3) If 10206 was part of a formula, bar code, serial number, part number, etc., how would the system know if it is a violation of trademark laws?

      Think about this - The number 42 is a part of the Hitchhikers Guide story. I can safely use "42" in anything I want because its a number AS LONG AS I don't go and say "it's the meaning of life" BECAUSE then it would have an association. Now as far as Intel, they can't say "the number is associated with our chips" because there is such a weak (at best) association between a number and something physical (the chip).Mostly I think the law has told Intel "Whatever. The numbers look more like a serial number rather than a trademark worthy thing". That is why Intel can't get its wishes.

      Anyways, that is my ten cents (my two cents is free...) and I could totally be wrong here. However that is my understanding.

    8. Re:Gflargen and Blackeblae by ozmanjusri · · Score: 1
      dreaming of Longhorn firing bits through a tweaked Sexium.

      Well, at least with Longhorn there's no way it's going to be premature.

      --
      "I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
    9. Re:Gflargen and Blackeblae by Hal_Porter · · Score: 3, Interesting
      Why are they called Arabic anyway? The only justification is that al Khwarizmi wrote a book popularising them in 825AD but they were actually invented centuries before hand in India.

      They weren't even used in the Arab world until modern times -

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Hindu-Arabic_numeral_system

      In the Arab world - until modern times - the Arabic numeral system was used only by mathematicians. Muslim scientists used the Babylonian numeral system, and merchants used the Abjad numerals. It was not until Fibonacci that the Arabic numeral system was used by a large population.
      --
      echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
    10. Re:Gflargen and Blackeblae by wild_berry · · Score: 1

      I think that quote has your answer: we adopted it because Fibonacci used it, and he called it the Arabic numeral system.

    11. Re:Gflargen and Blackeblae by cytg.net · · Score: 1

      not likely, being a new architecture and all.

    12. Re:Gflargen and Blackeblae by TGoddard · · Score: 1

      2) If you got 10206 as a math answer, how would the law differentiate between it and Intel's property? I should hope you'd have one on this.
    13. Re:Gflargen and Blackeblae by TGoddard · · Score: 1

      Wrote before thinking. This makes me look stupid...

    14. Re:Gflargen and Blackeblae by DiEx-15 · · Score: 1

      Nah... We all have done this before.

    15. Re:Gflargen and Blackeblae by default+luser · · Score: 1

      not likely, being a new architecture and all.

      But you see, Core and Core2 are two completely different architectures. This would make Core3 a fitting name for the next big thing.

      Core is simply a Pentium M with a streamlined FP unit. The SSE units are still 64-bit and there are still only three instruction decoders.

      Core2 adds the two 128-bit SSE registers, adds a fourth decoder, and a mess of other optimizations. This is certainly an architectural change.

      --

      Man is the animal that laughs.
      And occasionally whores for Karma.

  3. Intel Vs. AMD? by Naughty+Bob · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Could Intel beat AMD in its own "Fusion" plans?
    Intel is hugely advanced on AMD at this point, however, without AMD we wouldn't be seeing these releases. Hurray for the market, I guess....
    --
    "Be light, stinging, insolent and melancholy"
    1. Re:Intel Vs. AMD? by iknownuttin · · Score: 1
      Intel is hugely advanced on AMD at this point, however, without AMD we wouldn't be seeing these releases. Hurray for the market, I guess...

      Hell yeah! Without AMD, we'd all be on x86 technology. Although, there is/was Motorola. Wouldn't it be nice to run multiple time line(s) scenarios?

      --
      I prefer Flambe as apposed flamebait.
    2. Re:Intel Vs. AMD? by renegadesx · · Score: 1

      So far AMD's Phenom processor is not outpreforming the Core 2 Quad's as expected but at the same time AMD has set up an architecture that will give the ability to expand to more cores easier.

      This could give AMD an advantage come beyond quad cores however Intel I am sure are hard at work to make sure they stay in the lead.

      --
      Make SELinux enforcing again!
    3. Re:Intel Vs. AMD? by WarJolt · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Intel has expensive really fast multi core processors.
      AMD 64-bit processing is better. Depending on the type of processing you're doing that could mean a lot.
      We all know what a debacle Intels integrated graphics were in the past. I'm not sure if they should be using that as a marketing point.
      Since AMD acquired ATI I would assume AMDs integrated graphics would be far superior.

      NVIDIAs stock price hasn't been doing so good in the last couple months. Could this mean a return of integrated graphics? I'd bet my money on AMD who already owns ones of the big players.

    4. Re:Intel Vs. AMD? by Joe+The+Dragon · · Score: 2, Interesting

      But AMD has better on board video and there new chipset can use side port ram.

      Video on the cpu may be faster but you are still useing the same system ram and that is not as fast that ram on a video card and that ram it on it's own.

    5. Re:Intel Vs. AMD? by Naughty+Bob · · Score: 1

      I am nobody's fanboy, but I kinda believe that if/when the transition to 64-bit picks up speed, Intel would miraculously produce something fairly crushing.

      Your post makes me think that Intel will attempt a take-over of Nvidia, hostile or otherwise. But I have no knowledge in this area.

      --
      "Be light, stinging, insolent and melancholy"
    6. Re:Intel Vs. AMD? by eggnoglatte · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Your post makes me think that Intel will attempt a take-over of Nvidia, hostile or otherwise. But I have no knowledge in this area. Why would they? Intel already has the biggest GPU marketshare (bout 50% or so), and they achieve that with integrated graphics, that are arguably the way of the future. My guess is that NVIDIA will become the SGI of the early 21st century - they'll cater to a high-speed niche market. Too bad, actually, I kind of like their cards (and they have by far the best 3D Linux performance).
    7. Re:Intel Vs. AMD? by Naughty+Bob · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Video on the cpu may be faster but you are still using the same system ram and that is not as fast that ram on a video card and that ram it on it's own.
      Nobody could argue against that, but the two approaches solve different problems currently. If the drift is towards an all in one solution, then the drift is towards less capable, but cheaper tech. Most gamers are console gamers, perhaps the chip makers are coming to the conclusion that dedicated GPUs for the PC are a blind alley (a shame IMHO).
      --
      "Be light, stinging, insolent and melancholy"
    8. Re:Intel Vs. AMD? by Naughty+Bob · · Score: 1

      they'll cater to a high-speed niche market
      They don't already?

      To your general point- I fully agree, what with my 8800 equipped Ubuntu box 'n all.
      --
      "Be light, stinging, insolent and melancholy"
    9. Re:Intel Vs. AMD? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yeah, kinda like how the Nehalem can have up to eight cores.

    10. Re:Intel Vs. AMD? by 0111+1110 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      without AMD we wouldn't be seeing these releases. Actually this seems a bit disingenuous to me. Intel released Penryn way before they had to. Intel (the hare) was so far ahead of AMD (the tortoise) with the 65nm Core 2 that they could have sat back and relaxed for a while, saving R&D costs while waiting for AMD to catch up at least a little. I mean look at Nvidia for a perfect counterexample. Most people believe that they already have a next gen GPU ready but that they are sitting on it until they have someone to compete with besides themselves. To a lot of people that seems to make sense. Especially if you *only* care about making as much money as possible and don't care about being a technology leader. The only problem I have with that logic is that you will be losing sales from upgraders as well as allowing your competition to get closer to you so that you cannot price as high. But obviously Nvidia seems to feel that the savings in R&D costs and not competing with their own products is enough to justify it. Of course there is always the possibility that Nvidia is just not ready with their new tech yet, but not many people seem to believe that.

      Instead of waiting for some real competition, Intel released Penryn more or less right on schedule when the only competition they had was their own 65nm processors. Of course the quad cores are only just being released now, but they are still releasing them way before AMD has anything to really compete with them. People make all kinds of cynical statements about business methods without even considering corporate culture. Has it ever occurred to anyone that Intel simply may not believe in only releasing new tech when they absolutely have no choice due to competition?

      I'm not saying competition is not a good thing, but I don't think AMD is presenting much competition to Intel at the moment. AMD is in big trouble and Intel is well aware of that fact. I just don't think that it is competition that is driving Intel forward. Competition may affect their pricing, but I think Intel would keep right on with their two year tick tock cycles and process shrinks even if AMD folded tomorrow.
      --
      Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
    11. Re:Intel Vs. AMD? by Naughty+Bob · · Score: 2, Insightful

      It is only about the money. All decisions ultimately come back to that. With Penryn, huge fabricating plants were coming online, and they couldn't have justified (to shareholders) not following through. That it kept Intel's jackboot firmly on the AMD windpipe was in that instance a happy sweetener.

      --
      "Be light, stinging, insolent and melancholy"
    12. Re:Intel Vs. AMD? by Joe+The+Dragon · · Score: 2, Interesting

      With things like vista do you really want to give up 128-256 of system ram + the bandwidth need for that just for areo? The on chip video should have side port ram like the new amd chip can use or maybe have 32meg+ of on chip ram / cache for video. Just having a ddr 2/3 slot or slots with there own channels will be better then useing the same ones that are justed for system ram but ram on video cards is faster then that.

      also console games don't have mod's / users maps and other add ones they also don't have that many free games.

      you don't have many mmorpg games on them and the Xbox is pay to play online vs free on the pc and ps3.

    13. Re:Intel Vs. AMD? by Naughty+Bob · · Score: 1

      I just don't think the lack of side port ram is a deal breaker is all. It would be nice, but system ram is cheap, and it looks like the cool developments are in other directions. I'd be happy to be proved wrong.

      True enough about the restricted nature of console gaming, but don't expect that to inform 'Big Silicon' in its future decisions. Money is their only friend.

      --
      "Be light, stinging, insolent and melancholy"
    14. Re:Intel Vs. AMD? by Zeinfeld · · Score: 1
      Actually this seems a bit disingenuous to me. Intel released Penryn way before they had to. Intel (the hare) was so far ahead of AMD (the tortoise) with the 65nm Core 2 that they could have sat back and relaxed for a while, saving R&D costs while waiting for AMD to catch up at least a little. I mean look at Nvidia for a perfect counterexample. Most people believe that they already have a next gen GPU ready but that they are sitting on it until they have someone to compete with besides themselves.

      There are plenty of ultra high end folk who would pay mondo dollars for a faster GPU regardless of whether there was a faster one from the competition. More likely would be that nVidia recognize that they have somewhat pushed the edge as far as power output (heat) goes of late and they could use something of a minimum feature size shrink before they go to the next step.

      GPUs are pretty tricky heat wise because you can light up a lot more of your chip real estate with active circuits. Intel are not just putting masses of cache on their chips for speed, they need some less thermally intensive areas on the chip.

      --
      Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
      Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
    15. Re:Intel Vs. AMD? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

      Given that you can purchase a system with 3-4 GB quite cheaply, and by time these processors come to market the price will go down (though it's unlikely that computers will commonly come with over 4gb until 64bit is more reliable, or until there's some application that you actually need 4gb for.) It stands to reason that if you purchase a computer with one of these processors, it will come with 4gb of ram. As someone who runs vista with 3gb, i can assure you that it is enough for any needs I have found (I seldom get over 70% usage, and if i do at least 20% is Firefox and pidgin and their memory leaks, or i'm running a game.) (no IM client should hog 170+mb of memory, especially with only AIM running and only a few windows open, but i have it lying around, so i don't mind too much)

      Vista also has a ceiling of 3.5gb if I remember correctly. I forget what the extra 512mb gets used for if you have it, but if you have 4gb of ram in a vista system, the system will not show a some 2^x mb amount of it, and it isn't some amount being dedicated to integrated graphics.

    16. Re:Intel Vs. AMD? by mako1138 · · Score: 1

      Think further back. A few years ago, the Opteron and the Athlon64 took a big bite out of Intel's market share. That happened because Intel was arrogantly chasing higher clocks (P4) and awkward architectures (Itanium). The tick-tock strategy was adopted in response to AMD's success. If AMD hadn't embarrassed Intel so badly, I doubt we'd be seeing such rapid product cycles today.

      Though, 45nm processors are currently in short supply. They're usually sold out, and are marked up considerably.

      http://techreport.com/discussions.x/14323

    17. Re:Intel Vs. AMD? by ZachPruckowski · · Score: 1

      In 2009, even the lowest-end laptops are gonna have 2 GB of RAM. 128 MB for video is small potatoes for a consumer machine. Sure, you could add some extra RAM on the side, but that's $20 on a $800 machine (which sounds small, but is a decent slice of the profits). And adding 32 MB on die for video wouldn't help free up bandwidth or all that much RAM (because it's not large enough to not overflow into main RAM, and it's got to get to the Display Adapter somehow either way).

      The reason Intel has so much of the market share is because of price - Intel's IG solutions (and low-end chipsets overall) are the cheapest on the market. The chip-integrated GPU will be popular because it can cut those costs further. For the 95% of the populace who doesn't need more than Vista+Office+web+email, the goal now is to make their computers lighter, cheaper, and more efficient. Most users can't tell the difference between a 3870 and an Intel IG (given 2+ GB of RAM, which is soon to be normal), simply because the most graphically intensive thing they do is Flip 3D.

    18. Re:Intel Vs. AMD? by Hal_Porter · · Score: 1

      Vista 32 has a ceiling of 4GB. On most PC's the IO space is around 512MB - for the graphics card and so on. PCI and PCI express memory needs to be naturally aligned too, so a 256MB graphics card needs to be on a 256MB boundary. Since the Rom uses the very top of the address space you could well end up with a 512MB IO hole.

      Most motherboards can remap the memory hidden by the IO space above 4GB, and Windows does support PAE which allows DMA to and from there. But there are lots of broken chipsets, devices and drivers and Microsoft decided not to use memory above 4GB on 32 bit OSs. That applies to Vista32 and XP SP2 in 32 bit mode. 64 bit drivers always use PAE of course. Basically if you want support for addresses above 4GB on Windows, you need a 64 bit OS.

      I was considering making a Ramdisk driver actually, and using a AWE like scheme to map memory above 4GB into some pages below 4GB. Then I could memcpy to and from them. Problem is, what can you do with a 512MB Ram disk? Maybe it could be used for ReadyBoost and so on, but I'm not sure how to do TLB shootdown on a multiprocessor system which would be needed to make it reliable.

      --
      echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
    19. Re:Intel Vs. AMD? by wild_berry · · Score: 3, Informative

      Unreal founder Tim Sweeney says that Intel's integrated graphics are a real set-back for PC gaming (http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/03/10/1239205). Intel keep promising and failing to deliver substantive graphics performance (and even insisted on the 'Vista Capable' label being applicable to the Aero-incapable i915 graphics chipset to sell more of these chips - see http://slashdot.org/articles/08/03/01/1312233.shtml and http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/02/28/1746211&from=rss). AMD have released the 780G chipset which includes a Radeon HD2x00-class onboard graphics chip and which offers a good basic capability to play recent games.

    20. Re:Intel Vs. AMD? by InvisblePinkUnicorn · · Score: 1

      "without AMD we wouldn't be seeing these releases."

      No, without a demand for these advances, competition would exist only to lower prices, but because this demand exists, the competition also includes innovation. If AMD weren't in the running, some other company or companies would be. Hurray for the market being properly represented.

    21. Re:Intel Vs. AMD? by Joe+The+Dragon · · Score: 1

      Amd MB's are cheaper and you can get a good mid-range to high-end AMD board at the same price as low to mid-range intel one.

    22. Re:Intel Vs. AMD? by shizzle · · Score: 1

      No, without a demand for these advances, competition would exist only to lower prices, but because this demand exists, the competition also includes innovation. If AMD weren't in the running, some other company or companies would be. Hurray for the market being properly represented.

      What you're missing here is the concept of "barriers to entry". Between the legal hurdle of Intel's x86 implementation patents, the cost of the hundreds (or thousands) of engineers required to complete a modern microprocessor design, and the capital cost of manufacturing, it's not like a random person with a better idea can just go whip out a CPU and compete against Intel. AMD is one of the few companies that can play in this space. Most (maybe all) of the few others that have this capability (IBM, maybe Nvidia, ??) are constrained because of their dependence on Intel as a supplier and/or partner.

      I think it's pretty clear from pre-Opteron days (have people forgotten those so quickly?) that without AMD we'd all be porting our software to Itanium in order to break the 4GB barrier.

    23. Re:Intel Vs. AMD? by oni · · Score: 1

      Intel was arrogantly chasing higher clocks (P4) and awkward architectures (Itanium).

      Indeed. And furthermore, for a very long time intel was avoiding actual innovation and instead just arbitrarily segmenting the market. For example, back in the 1990s, they were selling 486SX chips. To make a 486SX, intel had to manufacture a 486DX and then go through the extra step of disabling the math coprocessor. In spite of the fact that they took that extra step - thus necessarily increasing the manufacturing cost, they sold the 486SX for less than the DX (of course, because it was slower).

      So, instead of spending their time innovating and coming up with a faster and better chip, they spent their time figuring out how to create an arbitrary market segment. If Ford sold V-8 engines and V-8SX engines where they had gone to the extra step of disabling two of the cylinders, people would feel like they were being ripped off.

      Intel has done that more recently with hyperthreading - turning it off in certain chips. But since AMD came along, they can't really get away with it - I mean, they can't sit on their laurels and depend on that. If they do, AMD will pass them again.

    24. Re:Intel Vs. AMD? by ckaminski · · Score: 1

      The SX issue could have been entirely due to yeild. Making 486DX-33 parts on a die, only maybe 10% of them will run at that speed. In some, the fp unit will be broken, but can still run at 33mhz, so you brand it a 486SX-33. In some, it won't even run at 33mhz, so you sell as 486SX-25 or 486SX-16. They still do it today, but you'll never see another general purpose CPU ever sold without a working fp-unit. Too many businesses running excel and too many gamers who depend on them.

    25. Re:Intel Vs. AMD? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I don't pay much attention to Tim Sweeney any more, and his moans about the status quo are not that relevant to new hardware from Intel. The forthcoming integrated graphics do indeed deliver substantial performance as well as a very interesting GPGPU architecture.

      As for their previous chipsets, Intel don't make their money from game developers. Game developers always bitch when cheap hardware sells well, because it's always more awkward to program for. But it's always been this way in the industry, ever since the days of Pong, and programmers who can't stand the heat have always had the option of leaving the kitchen.

      You can spend your time moaning, or you can spend your time figuring it out. Apparently Sweeney does more of the former, given the performance of UE3 on cheap commodity hardware and the frequency of articles where "Sweeney says this is a really bad idea".

  4. Re:Nehalem? Larrabee? by TechyImmigrant · · Score: 4, Informative

    They are code names, not product names.

    Intel has a rich collection of silly code names.

    --
    Evil people are out to get you.
  5. TPM by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    So.. which one of these is going to be Intel finally slipping an integrated TPM into the chipset so that everyone can benefit from owning an expensive cable box/console, rather than a real computer?

    1. Re:TPM by trickonion · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I dont understand your comment, I, like many other people dont like the idea of TPM, and from your post it seems you are sarcastically agreeing with me. (via the word slipped). You also, however say so we can get the advantage of owning an expensive cable box (which I could actually see as an advantage, if you already have one in your house).
      Your post confuses me (or I'm being retarded, this has happened twice before in my life, along with the 3 times I've been wrong), and it forces me to conclude, that you, AC are in fact a woman and are using feminine wiles.

      --
      I got you an Andes mint, but it melted in my pocket
    2. Re:TPM by Xtravar · · Score: 3, Funny

      it forces me to conclude, that you, AC are in fact a woman and are using feminine wiles. INTRUDER ALERT!!!! Sound the alarms!! We've got a code 159. Get me a traceroute, now!!!
      --
      Buckle your ROFL belt, we're in for some LOLs.
    3. Re:TPM by fred+fleenblat · · Score: 1

      depends how you feel about an HP-UX set top box.
      me, personally, i'm all for it.
      others may disagree, and I respect that.

  6. Still waiting for Mumbai by heroine · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    It's time for Intel to use Indian names, considering they're all designed in India.

    1. Re:Still waiting for Mumbai by VoltCurve · · Score: 0

      nothing is designed in India. They are simply cheap slave labour

    2. Re:Still waiting for Mumbai by Hal_Porter · · Score: 1

      Try going to Bangalore some time, and see how confident that will be true in 5 years time.

      --
      echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
  7. Re:Nehalem? Larrabee? by Naughty+Bob · · Score: 3, Funny

    I vote AMD hit back with "Orgo" and "Ftoomsh"

    --
    "Be light, stinging, insolent and melancholy"
  8. Re:Nehalem? Larrabee? by slew · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Nehalem? Larrabee?
    Heck, I remember when "Pentium" came out and people laughed

    Heck, I remember when "Itanium" came out and people laughed...

    But before they laughed, I remember a bunch of companies folded up their project tents (sun, mips, the remains of dec/alpha). I'm not so sure companies will do the same this time around... Not saying this time Intel doesn't have their ducks in a row, but certainly, the past is no indication of the future...
  9. Re:Please stop naming after WA and OR places by Itninja · · Score: 3, Funny

    I vote for Skookumchuck.

    --
    I judt got a nre Kinesis keybiartf so please excusr ant egregiou typos.
  10. More Integrated Garbage? by immcintosh · · Score: 4, Insightful

    So, this Larrabee, will it be another example of integrated graphics that "supports" all the standards while being too slow to be useful in any practical situation, even basic desktop acceleration (Composite / Aero)? If so, I've gotta wonder why they even bother rather than saving some cash and just making a solid 2D accelerator that would be for all intents and purposes functionally identical.

    1. Re:More Integrated Garbage? by frieko · · Score: 1

      Intel GMA950 does compositing just fine in Leopard. Compiz works plenty fast on it too, though it's buggy as hell.

    2. Re:More Integrated Garbage? by GXTi · · Score: 1

      What they need to do is make some discrete graphics cards. They seem to have a clue when it comes to making their hardware easy to work with from Linux; if only the cards had more horsepower they'd be a favorite in no time.

    3. Re:More Integrated Garbage? by Kamokazi · · Score: 4, Insightful

      No, far, far, from integrated garbage. Larrabee will actually have uses as a supercomputer CPU:

      "It was clear from Gelsinger's public statements at IDF and from Intel's prior closed-door presentations that the company intends to see the Larrabee architecture find uses in the supercomputing market, but it wasn't so clear that this new many-core architecture would ever see the light of day as an enthusiast GPU. This lack of clarity prompted me to speculate that Larrabee might never yield a GPU product, and others went so far as to report "Larrabee is GPGPU-only" as fact.

      Subsequent to my IDF coverage, however, I was contacted by a few people who have more intimate knowledge of the project than I. These folks assured me that Intel definitely intends to release a straight-up enthusiast GPU part based on the Larrabee architecture. So while Intel won't publicly talk about any actual products that will arise from the project, it's clear that a GPU aimed at real-time 3D rendering for games will be among the first public fruits of Larrabee, with non-graphics products following later.

      As for what type of GPU Larrabee will be, it's probably going to have important similarities to we're seeing out of NVIDIA with the G80. Contrary to what's implied in this Inquirer article, GPU-accelerated raster graphics are here to stay for the foreseeable future, and they won't be replaced by real-time ray-tracing engines. Actually, it's worthwhile to take a moment to look at this issue in more detail."

      Shamelessly ripped from:

      http://arstechnica.com/articles/paedia/hardware/clearing-up-the-confusion-over-intels-larrabee.ars/2

      --
      As our way of thanking you for your positive contributions to Slashdot, you are eligible to disable Slashdot 2.0.
    4. Re:More Integrated Garbage? by Funk_dat69 · · Score: 1

      Larrabee could be more of a hedge against IBMs Cell and Nvidia's GPUs for high computational workloads. The addition of graphics being a page from Nvidias book to try and get gamers to fund their HPC conquests.

      --
      FUNK!
    5. Re:More Integrated Garbage? by Vigile · · Score: 1

      You can also see the validity of, but debate around, Larrabee here in an interview with John Carmack: http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/03/12/1918250&from=rss

    6. Re:More Integrated Garbage? by Joe+The+Dragon · · Score: 1

      part of the slow down comes from having to use system ram at lest amd got that right be letting there new chipset with video built in use side port ram there are MB with coming soon and it should be nice to see how much of a speed up that gives you with just on board video alone and with hybrid Crossfire.

    7. Re:More Integrated Garbage? by donglekey · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Very interesting and I think you are right on the money. 'Graphics' is accelerated now, but the future may be more about generalized stream computing that can be used for graphics (or physics, or sound, etc) similar to the G80 and even the PS3's Cell (they originally were going to try to use it to avoid having a graphics card at all). This is why John Carmack thinks volumetrics may have a place in future games, why David Kirk thinks that some ray tracing could be used (not much, but don't worry it wouldn't really bring that much to the game anyway) and why Ageia created a company made to be sold before Intel, AMD/ATI, and Nvidia got into the stream processing business and beat them at their own game. Imagine all the what ifs you can think of in the video game world and they will start to become plausible over the next decade (but forget about ray tracing, it wouldn't be a good use of power at 100x the speed that we have now).

      --

      This Wiki Feeds You TV and Anime - vidwiki.org
    8. Re:More Integrated Garbage? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Larrabee is not integrated graphics. Its a discrete GPU that actually kicks quite a bit of ass.

    9. Re:More Integrated Garbage? by renoX · · Score: 1

      >No, far, far, from integrated garbage. Larrabee will actually have uses as a supercomputer CPU:

      Yes, if AVX includes 256bit = 4*64 FPU calculations with reasonable performance, I can imagine many computer scientist drooling over this..

    10. Re:More Integrated Garbage? by Chaset · · Score: 1

      Intel tried the graphics market once... it didn't work out very well as they got buried by nVidia/ATi et. al. in a hurry. It wasn't their "core competency".

      I suppose the landscape has changed since then... with AMD owning one of the major players and technological changes.

      One of my interesting thought experiments is having Intel buy Nvidia; sort of horizontally merging the two duopolies, but I can't see very far into that future.

      --
      -- "This world is a comedy to those who think, a tragedy to those who feel."
    11. Re:More Integrated Garbage? by TheLink · · Score: 1

      The Real Thing is too slow and will be too slow. The way I see it, everyone will still have to use "tricks".

      Carmack has had a good track record of figuring out nifty tricks that current popular tech can achieve or at least the popular near cutting edge tech - I remember just barely managing to play the first Doom on a 386SX, it sure looked a lot better than the other stuff out there.

      He used tricks for commander keen, wolf 3d, doom (2D game with some 3D), and so on.

      Carmack's engines tend to do pretty decent FPS for the visuals you get (maybe with the exception of Doom 3, I can't remember whether that one had a good balance or not - because I stuck with my Ti4200 :) ).

      Stuff like Crysis looks great, but you'll need an 8800GT just to get decent frames per sec at 1680 x 1050, and not so many months back (before the 8800GT and the ATI/AMD 3870 etc) something that fast would have cost way too much money for >=99% of the people. Now maybe it's too much for 90-95% of the people.

      That said, nowadays with the current tech, if you have good enough artists and textures, they can cover over a lot of graphics engine inadequacies. If you compare crysis in vista dx10 very high quality vs the hacked XP dx9 very high quality, while there are shadow differences, the textures make the XP version look almost as good. Also for games like TF2 where the graphics style is not so much on realism, I don't really see it being a minus if done well.

      In the end one may no longer need the latest and greatest tricks. The "bog standard crap" might end up good enough. Lots of people are still playing Counterstrike, Starcraft, Warcraft, Sims etc and they don't appear to care about cutting edge graphics quality.

      --
  11. Re:Nehalem? Larrabee? by Have+Blue · · Score: 4, Informative

    Most of Intel's codenames are names of real places.

  12. Re:Nehalem? Larrabee? by Kamokazi · · Score: 2, Interesting

    These are code names, not product names. They will probably all be Core 2(3?), Xeon, etc.

    --
    As our way of thanking you for your positive contributions to Slashdot, you are eligible to disable Slashdot 2.0.
  13. Re:Nehalem? Larrabee? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    This is what it's named after: http://www.oregonstateparks.org/park_201.php

    Someone even wrote a song about the place: http://www.google.com/search?q=everclear+Nehalem

  14. HyperThreading by owlstead · · Score: 2, Interesting

    "Also as noted, a return to SMT is going to follow Nehalem to the market with each core able to work on two software threads simultaneously. The SMT in Nehalem should be more efficient that the HyperThreading we saw in NetBurst thanks to the larger caches and lower latency memory system of the new architecture."

    Gosh, I hope it is more effective, because in my implementations I actually saw a slowdown instead of an advantage. Even then I'm generally not happy with hyper-threading. The OS & Applications simply don't see the difference between two real cores and a hyperthreading core. If I run another thread on a hyperthreading core, I'll slowdown the other thread. This might not always be what you want to see happening. IMHO, the advantage should be over 10/20% for a desktop processor to even consider hyperthreading, and even then I want back that BIOS option so that disables hyperthreading again.

    I've checked and both the Linux and Vista kernel support a large number of cores, so that should not be a problem.

    Does anyone have any information on how well the multi-threading works on the multi-core Sun niagara based processors?

    1. Re:HyperThreading by jd · · Score: 2, Interesting
      This is why I think it would be better to have virtual cores and physical hyperthreading. You have as many compute elements as possible, all of which are available to all virtual cores. The number of virtual cores presented could be set equal to the number of threads available, equal to the number of register sets the processor could describe in internal memory, or to some number decided by some other aspect of the design. Each core would see all compute elements, and would use them as needed for out-of-order operatons. The primary idea would be to hide the multithreading of the chip from the OS, yet take advantage of being able to multithread. In addition to that, however, if one core can't exploit multiple threads but another core can exploit many, then you don't waste compute elements or slow things down by not making resources available.

      (Since a compute element is designed for one specific task, you end up with a maximum number of supportable virtual cores equal to the number of pools times the number of elements in each pool. The minimum number of cores would be determined by the maximum number of threads generated by any instruction supported. If the CPU was really smart, it could "hotplug" CPUs to increase and reduce the number of cores that appear to the operating system, so that if there's a heavy, sustained use of the threading, the CPU doesn't try to overcommit resources.)

      --
      It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
    2. Re:HyperThreading by fitten · · Score: 1

      This is probably more due to Intel's implementation of SMT in P4 than it was because of SMT in general. Ideally, you have two (or more) instruction streams that can be multiplexed on the granularity of execution units not being full from one stream and L1 cache misses. Think of for every clock cycle, the dispatcher optimally selecting instructions/micro-ops/macro-ops/whatever from both instruction streams such that all execution resources are busy (or as close as it can get... no FPU instructions in either stream ready for dispatch obviously leaves those resources idle, for example).

      In theory, this means having a full pipeline with all execution units busy all the time (or very near it). Intel's P4 implementation had issues with Replay logic. Basically, it would burn lots of cycles and resources re-executing somewhat speculatively the same instruction over and over until it could actually finish, filling the pipeline with replayed instructions (ones it is already attempting executing) rather than executing new instructions from the two SMT streams. Nehalem shouldn't have this issue if they don't have the pathological Replay (helped because of shorter pipeline length) and many more execution resources than the P4 has.

      Just because Intel's first implementation of SMT was bad isn't an indicator that the entire technology is bad :)

    3. Re:HyperThreading by Yenya · · Score: 1

      The OS & Applications simply don't see the difference between two real cores and a hyperthreading core. If I run another thread on a hyperthreading core, I'll slowdown the other thread.

      Wrong. Linux scheduler can distinguish between two real cores and a hyperthreading core (i.e. it prefers to run the threads on independent cores). Linux scheduler can also take into consideration core to socket mapping (it prefers to run threads on cores in a single socket in order to allow the other sockets lower their frequency when idle).

      Hyperthreading/SMT can hurt performance anyway, because of the bigger L1/L2 cache pressure.

      --
      -Yenya
      --
      While Linux is larger than Emacs, at least Linux has the excuse that it has to be. --Linus
    4. Re:HyperThreading by KowShak · · Score: 1

      The OS & Applications simply don't see the difference between two real cores and a hyperthreading core. I have written wrote code specifically for mapping threads to cores to sockets, it can be done although it is tricky to do.
    5. Re:HyperThreading by default+luser · · Score: 1

      Gosh, I hope it is more effective, because in my implementations I actually saw a slowdown instead of an advantage. Even then I'm generally not happy with hyper-threading. The OS & Applications simply don't see the difference between two real cores and a hyperthreading core. If I run another thread on a hyperthreading core, I'll slowdown the other thread. This might not always be what you want to see happening. IMHO, the advantage should be over 10/20% for a desktop processor to even consider hyperthreading, and even then I want back that BIOS option so that disables hyperthreading again.

      SMT, or Hyperthreading, is intended to reduce the overhead of task switching. Instead of clearing out the pipeline and and switching tasks at the OS level, the processor automatically detects a wait state on TASK_A and switches to TASK_B in a single clock cycle. There is no magical performance improvement, the goal is to reduce the overhead of task switching.

      This was intended to hide the horrible I/O latency of the Pentium 4, and it did a decent job of it (on the server). On the desktop, it caused slowdown because HyperThreading added processing overhead, and most applications were not multithreaded OR I/O limited. If you didn't have multi-threaded code, you actualy got lower performace due to the overhead.

      Well, now Intel sees two things happening in the market: one, Sun is making inroads with their Niagra architecture, using simple cores with SMT to produce high performnace on I/O-bound tasks. Intel sees this as an opportunity to reintroduce SMT to compete with Sun in the low-power, high-I/O market. On the desktop side, games are using more resources than ever (finally I/O bound), and some games can take advantage of as many as 4 threads. Having zero switching time between those I/O-hungry game threads could be impressive.

      No, it certainly won't be all that impressive for the desktop, but at the same time it won't be the performance detriment it once was. The server market will LOVE it, and that's what really pleases Intel.

      --

      Man is the animal that laughs.
      And occasionally whores for Karma.

    6. Re:HyperThreading by owlstead · · Score: 1

      I hope you are right. My code was 8 way multi-threaded (9 way if you added the admin thread, but that was almost using no cycles - sleeping most of the time). Slow downs whatever way I used it (Java using real threads, cryptographic uses). Ok, the chances of using any FPU or SSE instructions was close to zero of course. But really, what kind of program would use the FPU and the integer units fully at the same time?

  15. Good and bad by Bullfish · · Score: 1

    While these processors may end up being great, in the end they may very well push AMD over the edge if you consider that AMD's new processors get clobbered by Intel's old processors. In the end, unless AMD pulls a rabbit out of their hat by the end of the year, this may either be the last innovation Intel makes for a while, or the last affordable one. As consumers we owe AMD a vote of thanks for driving Intel to the level they are at now.

  16. Ummmmm, no by Sycraft-fu · · Score: 4, Interesting

    First off, new integrated Intel chipsets do just find for desktop acceleration. One of our professors got a laptop with an X3000 chip and it does quite well in Vista. All the eye candy works and is plenty snappy.

    However, this will be much faster since it fixes a major problem with integrated graphics: Shared RAM. All integrated Intel chipsets nab system RAM to work. Makes sense, this keeps costs down and that is the whole idea behind them. The problem is it is slow. System RAM is much slower than video RAM. As an example, high end systems might have a theoretical max RAM bandwidth of 10GB/sec if they have the latest DDR3. In reality, it is going to be more along the lines of 5GB/sec in systems that have integrated graphics. A high end graphics card can have 10 TIMES that. The 8800 Ultra has a theoretical bandwidth over 100GB/sec.

    Well, in addition to the RAM not being as fast, the GPU has to fight with the CPU for access to it. All in all, it means that RAM access is just not fast for the GPU. That is a major limiting factor in modern graphics. Pushing all those pixels with multiple passes of textures takes some serious memory bandwidth. No problem for a discrete card, of course, it'll have it's own RAM just like any other.

    In addition to that, it looks like they are putting some real beefy processing power on this thing.

    As such I expect this will perform quite well. Will it do as good as the offerings from nVidia or ATi? Who knows? But this clearly isn't just an integrated chip on a board.

    1. Re:Ummmmm, no by Quarters · · Score: 1

      X3000 is an ATi part. It's a daughter board with a GPU and dedicated RAM, not an integrated solution.

    2. Re:Ummmmm, no by tclout · · Score: 1


      Oh really now?

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_GMA#GMA_X3000

  17. Re:Nehalem? Larrabee? by mrbluze · · Score: 1

    Larrabee has been around for ages. I remember how in Get Smart he worked for Control, but in the end he quit to join IBM. Now we find him again, this time at Intel. I think I'm having another one of those headaches again.

    --
    Do it yourself, because no one else will do it yourself. [beta blockade 10-17 Feb]
  18. Why the brick wall? by Reality+Master+101 · · Score: 1

    I can't even find the clock speed in that article, which means we're STILL probably stuck at 3.5 Ghz +/- .5 Ghz, which we've been stuck for what, three, four years? What the hell happened? If we're still shrinking components, why are we not seeing clock speed increases?

    --
    Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
    1. Re:Why the brick wall? by glitch23 · · Score: 1

      I can't even find the clock speed in that article, which means we're STILL probably stuck at 3.5 Ghz +/- .5 Ghz, which we've been stuck for what, three, four years? What the hell happened? If we're still shrinking components, why are we not seeing clock speed increases?

      Intel's current designs are basically focusing on what I'd consider horizontal scaling instead of vertical. That is, they are increasing the # of cores that run at a lower frequency which makes up for raising the clock speed. In addition, they run cooler. You aren't losing ground. If the Core 2 Duos weren't more efficient and provided better performance then Intel wouldn't be beating AMD's ass with them. You now have up to 4 cores in a single package each running at 2-3ghz (not sure the exact number for the high-end Extreme chips) instead of a single or even 2 cores running at a theoretical 4 or 5 ghz. The performance difference may or may not be much but it is still more using the horizontal scaling rather than vertical, not to mention better on power requirements.

      --
      this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom. -- Lincoln, Gettysburg Address
    2. Re:Why the brick wall? by djohnsto · · Score: 4, Informative

      Because power generally increases at a rate of frequency^3 (that's cubed). Adding more cores generally increases power linearly.

      For example. Let's start with a single-core Core 2 @ 2GHz. Let's say it uses 10 W (not sure what the actual number is).

      Running it at twice the frequency results in a (2^3) = 8X power increase. So, we can either have a single-core 4 GHz Core 2 at 80W, or we can have a quad-core 2GHz Core 2 at 40W. Which one makes more sense?

      --
      Dan
    3. Re:Why the brick wall? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      While clockrate has stagnated, performance per clock has increased. That's not a bad thing, especially considering Intel's past clock-fraud.

    4. Re:Why the brick wall? by TheSync · · Score: 5, Informative

      1) We've hit the "Power Wall", power is expensive, but transistors are "free". That is, we can put more transistors on a chip than we have the power to turn on.

      2) We also have hit the "Memory Wall", modern microprocessors can take 200 clocks to access DRAM, but even floating-point multiplies may take only four clock cycles.

      3) Because of this, processor performance gain has slowed dramatically. In 2006, performance is a factor of three below the traditional doubling every 18 months that occurred between 1986 and 2002.

      To understand where we are, and why the only way to go now is parallelism versus clock speed increase, see The Landscape of Parallel Computing ReseView from Berkeley.

    5. Re:Why the brick wall? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I thought the formula for CPU power usage was voltage * frequency^2. Your basic argument remains intact though; it remains very difficult to scale frequencies up higher while having any power efficiency - the lower the voltage, the less difference between a 1 and 0 there is, so the more precise you have to be in order to read them.

      Initially intel wanted/expected the pentium 4 line to top out around 8-10 ghz, and built the architecture on that notion. It was significantly flawed - 3.8 was the highest frequency they reached with factory settings, and i'm sure even it required extensive cooling. I forget the record for overclocking a p4, but I don't think it even reached 8 ghz; this was using liquid nitrogen to cool the CPU. It still exploded after 30 seconds or so, creating a hole in the motherboard where the CPU should have been.

      So yes, intel has wisely decided to back off from the ghz race, especially as most consumers have enough computing power and are more concerned with performance/price - either to buy or per watt.

    6. Re:Why the brick wall? by realmolo · · Score: 1

      Well, performance-wise, a single-core 4GHz Core 2 makes more sense.

      We still don't have much software that can really take advantage of multiple cores. A single core running at 4GHz is going to be MUCH faster on almost every benchmark than 2 cores running at 2GHz each.

      But, it doesn't matter. Multi-cores are the future, and we need to figure out a way to take advantage of them.

    7. Re:Why the brick wall? by mczak · · Score: 1

      If you write it like that, not true. Power generally increases linearly with frequency. A cpu running at 4Ghz will use twice as much power as the same cpu running at 2Ghz (actually slightly less than twice since the leakage is the same).
      The problem with this is that to achieve twice the frequency (for the same cpu), you likely need to increase the voltage (increasing voltage increases power at a rate of voltage^2), and there is only so much you can increase the voltage... If you'd design the cpu to reach higher frequencies from the ground up, you'd get other problems (need more transistors (more expensive, more power), more deeply pipelined (can lower performance).
      (btw the voltage^2 power scaling isn't really true anymore, it's quite nonlinear with those small structures nowadays - in fact there's a exponential term too which will dominate scaling after a certain voltage.)

    8. Re:Why the brick wall? by Prune · · Score: 1

      The single core still makes mores sense, because most computations other than graphics are not easily (or at all) parallelizable.
      Instead, what is needed when power becomes excessive is simply a shift to a newer technology--and there are many options, so there's no fundamental issue, just a monetary one, and so any possible profits will be milked from the slow silicon substrate for as long as possible, even if progress is slowed down because of it.

      --
      "Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason."
    9. Re:Why the brick wall? by Prune · · Score: 0

      This is wrong, since many computations are not parallelizable. What is needed is simply a shift to a different technology. Instead, they're milking the silicon cow as long as possible, at the expense of slowed down progress, and mistakenly putting the burden on programmers.

      --
      "Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason."
    10. Re:Why the brick wall? by Kupek · · Score: 1

      We've also squeezed about as much as we can out of supercalar designs; see the Wikipedia entry on limitations and alternatives.

    11. Re:Why the brick wall? by 5pp000 · · Score: 1

      power generally increases at a rate of frequency^3

      No, power is linear in clock frequency, and quadratic in voltage. References are easy to find on the Web; here's one.

      --
      Your god may be dead, but mine aren't!
    12. Re:Why the brick wall? by default+luser · · Score: 1

      NOT TRUE, PLEASE MOD DOWN PARENT.

      DYNAMIC POWER = FREQUENCY * CAPACITIVE LOAD * VOLTAGE^2

      The above ignores leakage, but as another poster mentioned, that is not related to frequency. Leakage actually scales LINEARLY with the device voltage.

      Adding more cores DOES increase power linearly. but the frequency^3 comment is completely off-base. The worst offender is actually voltage, which adds quadratic dynamic power and linear leakage power. As you raise the frequency, power consumption can increase even more than just linearly, because you need higher voltages to drive higher frequencies.

      Example: say you had a 2.0 GHz, 1.0v processor, which used 20w dynamic power. Now, let's say you want double the performance (4.0 GHz), but that requires 1.2v to drive it. This would give you:

      20w * (4.0 GHz / 2.0 GHz) * (1.2v^2 / 1.0v^2) = 57.6w. You increased performance 2x, but had to increase dynamic power by almost 3x!

      Thus, the designers of processors usually target a sweet-spot with a good combination of low voltage and marginal frequency. Adding more cores allows them to use the same parameters for each core, which yields (potentially) a 1 to 1 performance to power increase.

      --

      Man is the animal that laughs.
      And occasionally whores for Karma.

    13. Re:Why the brick wall? by fitten · · Score: 1

      There's also the issue that clock speed isn't just running up a clock. It's distance (yeah, there are some things more than that, but it's basically how far the signal can travel at a given speed and be stable before it's latched). The distance the signal has to travel through the longest pipeline stage is the fastest that the clock can run without violation of setup/hold times and such. A single gate switch time is a bit faster than 3GHz or whatever we see. The thing is, the signal has to travel a ways through all those gates and stuff before it can be latched for the next pipeline stage.

      Using the same process that Intel is using right now for Core2 parts, you could design a processor that runs much faster than 3GHz (hello P4) or you could design one so complex that it can only run at a few MHz because the longest paths prevent it. Run the clock too fast and the signal just doesn't have time to make it to the finish line, and then the best you can hope for is a hard crash. At worst, you can produce garbage from a calculation that get propagated right along. The problem is, sometimes it's difficult to notice when that happens.

  19. Re:Nehalem? Larrabee? by TheRaven64 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    But before they laughed, I remember a bunch of companies folded up their project tents (sun, mips, I think you are mistaken. MIPS still exists, but SGI stopped using it. HP killed both PA RISC and Alpha, but they co-developed Itanium, so it isn't entirely surprising. Sun kept developing chips, and currently hold the performance-per-watt crown for a lot of common web-server tasks.
    --
    I am TheRaven on Soylent News
  20. Anti-Trust Question... by dosh8er · · Score: 2, Interesting

    ... because I simply _don't_ trust any company/companies with market share as vast as Intel (yeah, I know, the "Traitorous Eight"). Apparently, AMD has had a lot of legal beef with Intel in the past, in fact, they used to be best buds, until Intel snaked AMD from some business with IBM. I know it's only a matter of time before Intel outwits AMD in the mass sales of proc.'s (esp. in the desktop/laptop field... I personally LOVE the power-saving on my Dual-Core... 3.5 Hrs avg. on a battery is GREAT for the powerhorse that it is), but what can AMD do? Merge with ATI... oops, already been done. So is AMD restricted to GPU market for the rest of their (profitable) life?

    I can see this going two ways:
    1) Intel forces AMD outta business. AMD ends up liquidating its stock/technology to foreign companies (read: outside USA).
    2) AMD Brings an Anti-Trust case against Intel for 'unfair practices' or some crap (IANAL).

    However, there is ALWAYS the possibility that Intel pulls another Pentium Bug. Remember the mid-late 90's ? (God how _could_ we _forget_ the 90's!?) Either way, AMD needs to diversify their R&D and/or look for more lucrative business opportunities (whatever that means), or -the winner IMHO- work with IBM on this power saving crusade.

    Was denken Sie, Slashdot Crowd?

    --
    This useless space for sale, inquire at front desk.
    1. Re:Anti-Trust Question... by Bacon+Bits · · Score: 1

      The Pentium Bug isn't going to happen again. Or rather, it still happens but it doesn't matter.

      Since the Pentium, all Intel (and AMD) processors have used microcode. That is, there is a layer of abstraction between machine code that the processor executes and the actual electronic logic on the chip. It's a layer between the physical processor and Assembly. What it allows you to do is provide bug fixes for processor design errors. It's slightly slower because it's an extra decode operation, but it allows for much more complex and risky designs because you can fix errors you find after the chip is in production.

      Microcode updates are loadable by the BIOS or by the OS. They are loaded each time the PC is powered on. BIOS updates are preferable, of course, but those "drivers" you can download for AMD processors, and certain updates available through OS vendors (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/936357) apply updates to the OS microcode.

      --
      The road to tyranny has always been paved with claims of necessity.
    2. Re:Anti-Trust Question... by wild_berry · · Score: 1

      It must be dark in your basement. Did you miss the most-recent Intel-AMD anti-trust http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060421-6652.html that was started in June 2005?

  21. Re:Nehalem? Larrabee? by glitch23 · · Score: 2, Informative

    They typically (maybe all) come from various types of things (e.g. mountains [mckinley]) in the north west portion of North America. You'll notice many sound the same such as Tukwila and Willamette.

    --
    this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom. -- Lincoln, Gettysburg Address
  22. Re:F*K, look around! by zakeria · · Score: 1

    Your right we should all take the problems of the world upon us and go bunkers!!! go save a whale you knob! people die for stuff all over the world "including the USA & UK".

  23. Re:Nehalem? Larrabee? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Larrabee? Wasn't that the superhero with the suction cup ears?

  24. Re:Nehalem? Larrabee? by mrbluze · · Score: 1

    Actually, stupidly enough, I think the robot in Get Smart was Hymie.

    --
    Do it yourself, because no one else will do it yourself. [beta blockade 10-17 Feb]
  25. Re:Nehalem? Larrabee? by Whiteox · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Mind you, it takes a genius like me to know what the hell you're talking about!

    --
    Don't be apathetic. Procrastinate!
  26. Re:Please stop naming after WA and OR places by Neil+Hodges · · Score: 1

    I don't know; Puyallup has a ring to it not-too-different from the other chip codenames. For all we know, it's already been used.

    If you want obscure, try Stanwood, Smokey Point, or Granite Falls. They all sound like CPU names, but are cities most never have even heard of.

  27. closing the FSB loophole by 0111+1110 · · Score: 1

    While this new architecture sounds amazing, and I am planning to upgrade in about a year when this is released, is anyone else a bit worried about the overclocking potential of Nehalem? Intel sells their high end $1000 + 'Extreme' CPUs with an unlocked multiplier and, other than a higher bin, that is really its only selling point. I remember the days before Intel started locking down the multipliers. Lots of people thought it might spell the end of overclocking. But of course it turned out that FSB overclocking, although RAM and chipset limited, was a perfectly viable alternative and so overclockers were freed from Intel's pricing structure. But this seems like an opportunity for Intel to add value to their more profitable high binned parts by closing the FSB loophole and leaving no way for overclockers to do their thing. Could it be that by next year only the rich will be able to afford a bleeding edge CPU?

    --
    Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
    1. Re:closing the FSB loophole by lahs0n · · Score: 1

      First off, don't call the Extreme procs a "higher bin". They're rated a higher TDP in part to overclockers; the expectation is maximum juice. That's not a higher bin. That's simply more power.

      And since when did "no FSB"=="no overclock"? How does AMD do it, then? Intel will most likely do them one better. (And I am an AMD fanboy FWIW.)

      It would make no sense for the sake of Intel's pockets for them to turn against the overclocking community. The options will still be there for anyone with a non-Intel board (BX2-types excepted) and they'll still make a 1.6 GHz dual or quad-core Celeron name-justified by its low cache (because we know that means everything to performance) knowing well that many of us will opt for the $40 chip and push it to $400 chip speeds.

      There's an audience for every Core they make (I wasn't about to say every Itanium^W^WCPU).

  28. Re:F*K, look around! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The difference is, this CPU stuff is actually interesting

  29. Re:F*K, look around! by zakeria · · Score: 1

    me thinks /. is broken???

  30. dual monitor support? by rhavenn · · Score: 1

    So, will Intel finally release a dual-DVI setup then? I love nVidia, but their lack of FreeBSD x64 support and the fact that I really have no need for a nVidia card outside of dual-monitor support has me searching high and low for a decent dual-DVI setup that works with xorg drivers and has 3D/DRI out of the box that lets me use some 3D affects and do basic 3D programming without stuttering like a mofo or switching to "soft-ware rendering" mode :(

    FYI: ATI lost me as a customer with their many years of zero Linux support and not to mention they still don't support FreeBSD. I won't use them except for some integrated server boards where it doesn't matter.

    1. Re:dual monitor support? by dpokorny · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Effectively all of Intel's chipsets support dual digital outputs. Many mobile chipsets support 5+ unique outputs. Just take a look at the spec sheets available at developer.intel.com. It's a question of the motherboard manufacturers -- they need to put one or more sDVO transmitters on the motherboard to support the physical DVI connectors.

      There is a standard called ADD+ that allows you too connect the transmitters via an AGP or PCIe card, however, given that drivers are validated with specific transmitters, it's unusual to find ADD+ cards outside of driver development groups or validation teams.

      However, if you can find an ADD+ card with a pair of common transmitters such as the Chrontel CH7307, then you can get your dual DVI outputs.

      (Not speaking as an official representative of Intel Corporation)

    2. Re:dual monitor support? by dbIII · · Score: 1

      You are not going to see an open nvidia driver until the silly software patent mess vanishes. You could continue to punish nvidia for the sins of SGI et al or you could just download their drivers.

  31. The Giant is awakened by markass530 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I say this, as an admitted AMD fanboy, and in hopes that they can make a comeback, to once again force intel into a frenzy of research and development. I Can't help but imagine that AMD exec's are saying something along the lines of Isoroku Yamamota's famous WWII post pearl harbor quote, "I fear that all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant." It's all gravy for consumers so one can't help to be happy at the current developments. However to ensure future happiness for consumers, one must also hope for an AMD Comeback.

    1. Re:The Giant is awakened by Hal_Porter · · Score: 5, Informative
      I think AMD will do OK. Once Dell and the like get used to using CPUs from multiple sources they will probably survive. And a small company like AMD probably has an edge in terms of shorter design cycles and the ability to pick niches. AMD64 was a brilliant hack in retrospect that gave people most of the features of Itanium they wanted (64 bit, more registers) and none that they didn't (and expensive single source CPU with crap integer performance). Meanwhile Intel got hopeless bogged down trying to sell people Itaniums that they didn't want.

      AMD and they have other clever stuff in the pipeline. E.g.

      http://www.tech.co.uk/computing/upgrades-and-peripherals/motherboards-and-processors/news/amd-plots-16-core-super-cpu-for-2009?articleid=1754617439

      What's more, with that longer instruction pipeline in mind, it will be interesting to see how Bulldozer pulls off improved single-threaded performance. Rumours are currently circulating that Bulldozer may be capable of thread-fusing or using multiple cores to compute a single thread. Thread fusing is one of the holy grails of PC processing. If Bulldozer is indeed capable of such a feat, the future could be very bright indeed for AMD.
      --
      echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
  32. the year 3000 by rice_burners_suck · · Score: 0, Redundant

    when are they gonna come out with a processor capable of performing the way processors will in, say, the year 3000?

  33. Re:Nehalem? Larrabee? by ozbird · · Score: 1

    You don't have to be a genius, but I bet the Young Ones won't get it.

  34. But.. by miknix · · Score: 1

    ..will the GPU run compiz?

  35. No forgiveness for ATI by BrunoUsesBBEdit · · Score: 1, Insightful

    [quote]ATI lost me as a customer with their many years of zero Linux support and not to mention they still don't support FreeBSD. I won't use them except for some integrated server boards where it doesn't matter.[/quote]

    No forgiveness for ATI. I think we need to stay loyal to the companies that first showed us respect and show us the most respect today. Intel has poured resources into Linux and Xorg. When we are able to of load all HD video decoding from our CPUs to our GPUs, it will be Intel that makes that possible. For years ATI and nVidia have taunted the MythTV community with $25 512MB video cards that could easily handle HD video if only the manufactures would support us. This is a grievance of which I can't easily let go.

    --
    The only stable state is the one in which all men are equal before the
  36. Re:Nehalem? Larrabee? by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

    Just for the record, Sun canceled their last product line because they flailed on completing it in a timely fashion, and by the time it came out it would have been dramatically outdated already. So instead they canned it; brought out broader versions of existing chips rather than deeper, new processors; and built x86-64-based systems in the meantime.

    --
    "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
  37. Re:Nehalem? Larrabee? by syousef · · Score: 1

    Larabee was the Chief's dumbass assistant.

    http://www.wouldyoubelieve.com/larabee.html

    Hymie was the robot

    http://www.wouldyoubelieve.com/hymie.html

    --
    These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
  38. Re:F*K, look around! by MobileTatsu-NJG · · Score: 1

    While /. people are wanking off the next CPU from Intel, people die in Tibet because they want to be free. And not free as beer, you nerds. Please tell me how I can save a life over there.
    --

    "I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)

  39. Re:Nehalem? Larrabee? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    Most of Intel's codenames are names of real places.

    How long until they release a chip named after Intercourse,PA,
    Or my favourite, Wankers Corner,OR

    AMD will join the fun and look to France for inspirational place names, such as Condom, Tampon and Herpes

    Not to be outdone, poor old Amiga Inc finally release a new computer named after the village of Shittington,in the UK,with an update scheduled for 2025 named after Mount Buggery in Australia.

  40. What's with the Hebrewlish? by flyingfsck · · Score: 1

    These Intel Hewbrewlish names are getting really hard to pronounce.

    "Hebrew English is to be helpings and not to be laughings at."

    --
    Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
  41. Re:Nehalem? Larrabee? by hairyfeet · · Score: 1

    Hey,don't forget Bald Knob and Pigskillet,AR.I think my state has to be in the top 10 for stupid town names.Which is good,since we're 49th in everything else.The only thing that saves us from dead last is the consistent suckage of Mississippi.Go Mississippi!

    --
    ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
  42. Re:Nehalem? Larrabee? by theendlessnow · · Score: 1

    Heck, I remember when "Itanium" came out and people laughed...

    Whoa! You mean they stopped laughing? Now that's major news!

  43. OT-sig by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    There are parallel examples, like marsupials that parallel other sorts of mammals that are placental. They look and act roughly similar and occupy similar niches in their local environment.

    1. Re:OT-sig by glitch23 · · Score: 1

      There are parallel examples, like marsupials that parallel other sorts of mammals that are placental. They look and act roughly similar and occupy similar niches in their local environment.

      Those animals are parallel but not from separate origins. Evolution says there is a single origin. And given that I have to ask why was there only one. If scientists think evolution can happen again on another planet then why did it only happen once on this planet?

      --
      this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom. -- Lincoln, Gettysburg Address
  44. prefix confusion... by drew · · Score: 1

    Given that processors with four cores are called "quad-core", shouldn't a six core processor be a "sexa-core" processor? Calling a six core processor "hexa-core" would imply that a processor with four cores should be called "tetra-core."

    </pedantic>

    --
    If I don't put anything here, will anyone recognize me anymore?
    1. Re:prefix confusion... by lahs0n · · Score: 1

      Why not just 6-core? It's different than the metric system; there's only so many names here. I don't think there's a prefix for 64. And what say they when 16-core debuts? (HEX! 0123456789ABCDEF)

    2. Re:prefix confusion... by koollman · · Score: 1

      HEX as in hexa deci mal. not hex al.

  45. Re:Nehalem? Larrabee? by BESTouff · · Score: 1

    Heck, I remember when "Itanium" came out and people laughed...
    suddenoutbreakofcommonsense ...
  46. Re:Nehalem? Larrabee? by (Score.5,+Interestin · · Score: 1

    >Intel has a rich collection of silly code names.

    Dunnyton must be getting near the top for silliness.

  47. OpenGL support needed to be confirmed? by tyrione · · Score: 1

    If they didn't support OpenGL you'd see Apple moving over to AMD without a second glance.

    1. Re:OpenGL support needed to be confirmed? by pandrijeczko · · Score: 1

      Compare the amount of Mac sales to the amount of PC sales and if Apple moved over to AMD, I doubt Intel would give a second glance either.

      --
      Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
    2. Re:OpenGL support needed to be confirmed? by gnasher719 · · Score: 1

      Compare the amount of Mac sales to the amount of PC sales and if Apple moved over to AMD, I doubt Intel would give a second glance either. Apple probably buys around 10 percent of all laptop chips that Intel produces, and mostly goes for the more expensive ones, so I would estimate about 20 percent of dollar revenue. And Apple buys a good amount of expensive quad core server chips as well. And they don't buy any of the $50 low end chips that end up in your $399 PC. So financially, losing Apple would be a major hit for Intel.
    3. Re:OpenGL support needed to be confirmed? by pandrijeczko · · Score: 2, Informative
      Apple probably buys around 10 percent of all laptop chips that Intel produces, and mostly goes for the more expensive ones, so I would estimate about 20 percent of dollar revenue.

      I notice you've tried to sneak in the adjective "laptop" in there. I think it would be erring on your side to suggest that no more than half the chips Intel produces are for laptops, the remaining being for desktop and servers. If your figures are correct (which I seriously doubt), then that puts Apple down to buying a maximum of 5% of Intels overall chip production. (Even then, whilst I accept there are possibly a higher proportion of Apple users in the US, that is not the case here in Europe where Apple's penetration for computers is very low.)

      And they don't buy any of the $50 low end chips that end up in your $399 PC.

      Except that you're now (presumably) talking about $399 PCs in general, not just laptops - I detect some serious massaging of figures now on your part.

      However, if you're talking about $399 (or in my case £399) laptops, then I call BS on you. Sure, a lot of home users buy a cheap laptop as a second home machine but the biggest buyers of laptops are corporates who do not buy the cheapest machines. Therefore, by supposition, higher grade chips also go into Dell's, HP's, Lenovo's, etc. mid- to high- end laptops which, because there are more of those than there are Macs sold, puts Apple into a much smaller minority than you are claiming.

      So please do not exaggerate the Mac's penetration (outside of the US at least) - there really are not that many of them about. As I've said previously on Slashdot, having spent 25+ years as a technical person in telecomms and IT travelling quite regularly around Europe and parts of the Middle East, I have seen a total of 3 Mac machines ever - one was an American tutor on a course I did, one was a student posing in the local Starbucks with one, and a friend of mine has a surplus Mac given to him by his boss that he has no idea what to do with and is still in the box.

      --
      Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
    4. Re:OpenGL support needed to be confirmed? by drsmithy · · Score: 1

      And Apple buys a good amount of expensive quad core server chips as well.

      I doubt that very much. Mac Pros aren't exactly a volume seller, and with only a single mid-range 1U server offering - and not an especially compelling one at that - Apple are far, far from a major player in the server market.

      So financially, losing Apple would be a major hit for Intel.

      No, they wouldn't A hit, yes, but not a major one.

    5. Re:OpenGL support needed to be confirmed? by tyrione · · Score: 1

      Apple probably buys around 10 percent of all laptop chips that Intel produces, and mostly goes for the more expensive ones, so I would estimate about 20 percent of dollar revenue.

      I notice you've tried to sneak in the adjective "laptop" in there. I think it would be erring on your side to suggest that no more than half the chips Intel produces are for laptops, the remaining being for desktop and servers. If your figures are correct (which I seriously doubt), then that puts Apple down to buying a maximum of 5% of Intels overall chip production. (Even then, whilst I accept there are possibly a higher proportion of Apple users in the US, that is not the case here in Europe where Apple's penetration for computers is very low.)

      And they don't buy any of the $50 low end chips that end up in your $399 PC.

      Except that you're now (presumably) talking about $399 PCs in general, not just laptops - I detect some serious massaging of figures now on your part.

      However, if you're talking about $399 (or in my case £399) laptops, then I call BS on you. Sure, a lot of home users buy a cheap laptop as a second home machine but the biggest buyers of laptops are corporates who do not buy the cheapest machines. Therefore, by supposition, higher grade chips also go into Dell's, HP's, Lenovo's, etc. mid- to high- end laptops which, because there are more of those than there are Macs sold, puts Apple into a much smaller minority than you are claiming.

      So please do not exaggerate the Mac's penetration (outside of the US at least) - there really are not that many of them about. As I've said previously on Slashdot, having spent 25+ years as a technical person in telecomms and IT travelling quite regularly around Europe and parts of the Middle East, I have seen a total of 3 Mac machines ever - one was an American tutor on a course I did, one was a student posing in the local Starbucks with one, and a friend of mine has a surplus Mac given to him by his boss that he has no idea what to do with and is still in the box.

      My original comment stands. Having friends from both Intel and Apple I know the close relationship that has developed and the cross-pollenation of technical knowledge benefits both companies. However, with the upcoming products Apple has in the pipeline, their impressive market gains in several market spaces and upcoming markets it's clear that Intel would lose several Billion dollars of future revenue by having Apple leave.

      Let me also point out the stagnation of the Intel stock that benefits from it's highly public relationship with Apple. Without Apple they are paired with the rest of the PC world as just the leader CPU provider--something it's trying to expand far beyond with and not the business they want to be solely betting on.

  48. Re:Nehalem? Larrabee? by mrbluze · · Score: 1

    Hymie was the robot Yep. Maybe the next Intel chipset should be called Hymie. I wonder what that would do to sales.
    --
    Do it yourself, because no one else will do it yourself. [beta blockade 10-17 Feb]
  49. Re:Please stop naming after WA and OR places by argiedot · · Score: 1

    Smokey Point sounds like a CPU name? That's the last thing I want my CPU to be, a point to let out the blue smoke.

  50. Re:Nehalem? Larrabee? by Trashman · · Score: 1

    My Favorite is Cut and Shoot, TX.

    --
    Do not read this .sig
  51. Pronunciation by jdray · · Score: 1

    BTW, the first is pronounced "nuh-HAY-lem", as in Nehalem Bay, Oregon.

    --
    The Spoon
    Updated 6/28/2011
    1. Re:Pronunciation by treeves · · Score: 1

      I think it's actually named after the river, just like Willamette (river in Oregon), Banias (river in Israel), and Shit Creek (river in old cliche).
      Ok, not that last one.

      --
      ...the future crusty old bastards are already drinking the Kool-Aid.
  52. Remember the i740 by Chaset · · Score: 1

    That's funny... /. ate my subject, which was "Remember the i740" before I hit "preview"...

    --
    -- "This world is a comedy to those who think, a tragedy to those who feel."
  53. Re:Nehalem? Larrabee? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Just for the record, Intel killed alpha. Damn shame.

  54. Re:Nehalem? Larrabee? by TheLink · · Score: 1

    Itanium? People laughed and started calling it the Itanic. Many still do, some might also call it an EPIC failure. It's only good for very niche applications. You're usually better off using an x86 (from AMD or Intel) or IBM POWER.

    The x86 is still king. It may be as ugly as a pig with a rocket strapped on, but it still flies faster than those elegant RISC eagles.

    While IBM's POWER stuff might be faster, it sure doesn't like a RISC anymore - definitely not a very "reduced instruction set" :). My bet is complex instructions that do a lot will keep winning as long as memory bandwidth and latency are constraints.

    --
  55. Re:Nehalem? Larrabee? by sam_paris · · Score: 1

    Are you referencing the young ones there?

  56. Re:Nehalem? Larrabee? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    They'd have to be made in Fab 28 then.

  57. Re:Nehalem? Larrabee? by Whiteox · · Score: 1

    Yes. To explain the reference, Orgo and Ftoomsh are both 'Helpers from Hell', working with the devil.
    If anyone uses their name 3 times, they are allowed to surface and cause pain and mayhem.
    So Orgo gets to go up a lot more often than Ftoomsh. eg 'Will I go to the party or go (orgo) to the pub?'
    But Ftoomsh doesn't get the same opportunities, cause no-one says Ftoomsh.
    Except Rik - one of the Young Ones, who repeats it 3 times, a typographical error in a newspaper he is reading aloud.

    --
    Don't be apathetic. Procrastinate!
  58. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 1

    Comment removed based on user account deletion